1. Field
The disclosure relates to compositions for use in lubricating storage media. More particularly, the disclosure relates to a lubricant for high temperature and low clearance applications and an apparatus incorporating such lubricants.
2. Background
With new recording technologies being developed, media lubricants must also be developed to meet the requirements of the advanced recording technologies. Currently, a liquid lubricant layer is disposed on top of a magnetic recording medium in order to reduce friction and wear caused by contact between the head and the disc. The lubricants generally used are linear perfluoropolyethers. However, because of newer recording technologies being developed, a premium is placed on media lubricants that have high thermal stability. For example, in the case of Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), where the disk surface is heated to a relatively high temperature by laser irradiation, the currently available media lubricants are unsuitable due to thermal material losses through evaporation or decomposition caused by the heating. To provide thermal stability, lubricants with high molecular weight have been used. However, these high molecular weight molecules generally suffer from low head stability, particularly at low clearance, because the size of the lubricant molecule increases with the molecular weight. As a result, head media spacing (HMS) must be reduced to increase areal density.